Multi-drug resistant bacteria and viruses, or “superbugs”, are causing serious concerns about safety and illness at hospitals worldwide. The resistance rates of common organisms to standard antibiotic regimens are rapidly increasing, causing risks to patient health and safety both within and outside hospitals. It is also causing treatment costs and the length of hospital stays to increase significantly. Staphylococcus Aureus, an organism which causes many common infections, is now classified as multi-drug resistant in more than 50% of cases in hospitals. According to the US Center for Disease Control, 1.7 million people per year are infected with “health-care related infections” at hospitals in the US alone, and that 99,000 people per year die from these infections. This is an existential crisis for hospitals—the superbugs are prevalent in the one place where people are most vulnerable to their attack.
The fight against superbugs has been likened to an “arms race” that will be difficult, if not impossible to win with drugs alone. The superbugs evolve very quickly to become resistant to new drugs. Currently, two primary methods are used to prevent infection: development of new antibiotics and increased use of sanitary measures in hospitals.
However, the pharmaceutical companies have little economic incentive to develop antibiotics and antivirals because of the low profitability when compared to drugs that can be developed and administered repeatedly to patients with chronic health issues. As a result, the development of new antibiotic and antiviral drugs to combat superbugs, although a major issue, receives less attention from the drug companies than it should.
A main strategy in combating the spread of these infections is through increased use of sanitary measures. The measures used by healthcare workers (HCW) to protect their patients from contracting such an infection include hand washing, use of latex gloves, respiratory masks, barrier gowns and strict physical isolation of patients. “Contact precautions” (wearing both gloves and gowns while touching a patient) is one modality that is increasingly employed in the fight.
These hospital isolation gowns are paper barrier gowns worn by HCW's when they come into contact with patients who are suspected of having a multi-drug resistant infection. The gowns are one-size-fits-all and they come in plastic packages of 8-12 gowns. They are sometimes put into “dispensers”, which are no more than metal boxes on a hospital room wall, or sometimes they are just left in the packaging on a table in or near the infected room.
HCW's often fail to be 100% compliant with the wearing of hospital isolation gowns, and even when they comply, the gowns are not necessarily effective. Many reasons contribute to this finding: the gowns are often difficult to locate as they are stored only in central areas of medical wards; the gowns are time-consuming and awkward to open, unfold, and enter into; even when they are used, they often fail to prevent contamination because they are stored in bundles on open tables allowing multiple HCW's to contaminate the gowns when handling the packaging. Finally, the opening of the gown prior to entering into the gown also allows for contamination of the outer surface of the gown by often contacting the hands and clothes of the wearer
In addition to the basic non-compliance with contact precautions inherent in the current system, the method of donning hospital isolation gowns is time-consuming and causes delays in the increasingly busy day of the HCW. Because the hospital isolation gowns are often not near the rooms where they are supposed to be worn, HCW's often do not wear the gowns if they will not be touching the patient (a violation of contact precautions as the entire patient room is considered to be contaminated so any contact with items in the room allows for contamination of clothing). Overcoming these limitations is an important step in preventing the further rise of MDR infections.
It is to the provision of an apparatus and method for dispensing one or more hospital isolation gowns and/or other items meeting these and other needs that the present invention is primarily directed.